


Running Softly

by Carpenoctemily



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Supernatural
Genre: Arrested Winchesters (Supernatural), Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Developing Friendships, Explicit Language, Gen, Gun Violence, Random & Short, References to Supernatural (TV), Sam Winchester-centric, Short, Short & Sweet, The Winchesters and The Law, The Winchesters' (Supernatural) Terrible Lives, Treehouse Ex-Machina, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-04-03 19:35:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 8,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14003172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carpenoctemily/pseuds/Carpenoctemily
Summary: "Staring at the barrel of her gun, he knows he should be afraid. But in all the chaos only one emotion courses through his veins.Relief."A Supernatural short story with a twist: every chapter begins with a different story starter or dialogue prompt.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is a bit of a weird story, inspired by an idea I got while browsing Pinterest at about 3 am a few months ago.
> 
> Basically, each short chapter of this fic begins with a dialogue prompt or story starter that I found on Pinterest. The story itself is somewhat disjointed, thanks to the random array of prompts I was trying to connect.
> 
> It's short and (sort of) sweet—each chapter is only a few hundred words long—but I hope you'll have as much fun reading it as I had writing it!
> 
> No knowledge of Criminal Minds is required to read this fic.
> 
> Updates every Tuesday and Saturday.

Staring at the barrel of her gun, he knows he should be afraid. But in all the chaos only one emotion courses through his veins.

Relief.

He lifts his hands into the air and closes his eyes, falling to his knees and allowing her to make her choice. All he can do now is hope that she makes the right one.

A man forces his arms against his back, and the familiar feeling of metal biting into his wrists tells him what she chose. He sags forward, allowing the man to restrain him. He's hopeless now. She knows everything about him. Every truth, every secret, every monster he's killed to save her and everyone like her. And she abandoned him.

When he opens his eyes, he sees her, still standing before him. Her gun pointed at his chest, she watches with a stony expression as two men grab his arms, forcing him to his feet. As he's pushed past her, he tries to meet her eyes. She ducks her head and averts her gaze.

She was his only hope to escape, his only hope to save the people of Denver and of the world.

And she betrayed him.

As he's led out of the warehouse, Sam Winchester curses her name.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for how short and stilted the first few chapters are, but I promise that it will pick up soon! (I'm terrible at exposition)

"You have blood on your knees. No one goes nowhere and gets blood on their knees."

Sam repeats his answer again, trying to convince the men interrogating him that he didn't go anywhere. Sure, he left, but his destination was exactly what he told them it was.

Nowhere.

But of course, they don't believe him. They'll never believe another thing he says now. It was a bad idea, trusting her with the truth. The white clothes and bare room tell him that much. Sam is trapped, now, and the blonde woman he made the mistake of trusting is going to make sure that he never escapes again. He'll spend the rest of his days in white clothes in a white room in a hospital clothed in white as if a single splash of color is enough to make the insane even crazier.

Sam knows that his mind is sound, at least for now. He knows how it feels when it isn't. But these white walls and white clothes can't distract Sam from his failures, from the simple fact that somewhere, his brother is waiting for him, looking for him. He'll never stop looking.

And that thought, that idea that Sam will never be able to tell his brother that he's okay, that he's just trapped, that's what's going to drive Sam insane.

"Where did you go when you escaped the precinct?" One of the men asks again, and Sam repeats his answer for the third time, recalling a fact that he read once in another world, in another life.

If going through the same motions and expecting a different result is a sign of insanity, Sam's mind may not be as sound as he thought.


	3. Chapter 3

"What now?"

"I don't know. I thought the jump would kill us."

It had been Dean's idea to escape through the window, and despite Sam's protests, he had been forced to go along with it. The only reason that the window had even been so easily accessible was its height: the brothers were being held on the fifth floor of an FBI field office.

Sam had scowled at his brother after the revelation—he had had no idea if Dean was telling the truth, but he had decided nonetheless that he was going to kill him.

Now, as Sam plays with his hands and stares at his lap, he wishes he hadn't obeyed Dean's second order—the order to go their separate ways. The last thing Sam saw was Dean disappearing around a corner before he was forced to sprint in the opposite direction, sidestepping into alleys and jumping fences to try to distance himself from the sirens at his back. He ran for hours as if his life depended on it, as if the fate of the world depended on him keeping his freedom and keeping his distance.

And then he was catapulted forward, pain shooting up his legs as concrete tore through denim and skin, and the sirens just kept getting louder, getting closer. Sam remembers ignoring the blood on his shins and pulling himself back up to his feet and running, running away from the sirens and to nowhere.

Fat lot of good that did, running. It just landed Sam here, in this prison disguised as a mental hospital, his door guarded by a rotating selection of faceless FBI agents while his brother waits for him to arrive at a meeting place they never had time to decide on.

Sam traces a jagged scar on his palm with his finger, wondering if this hell would still be real if he pressed down hard enough.


	4. Chapter 4

She never speaks, never makes a sound, but the look in her eyes tells Sam exactly what's about to happen.

"No." The single word escapes his ragged lips before he can stop it, his mind turning right to the worst-case scenario. He waits for the blonde woman who betrayed him to drive another nail into his heart, to tell him that his worst nightmare has come to pass while he waited here in this white room.

Three days since her betrayal, three days since his capture and he's going mad, trapped in this colorless room with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. They think he's crazy, laugh at his stories of angels and demons—stories he trusted her with, stories she told the world. And the whole time he hears whispers of his brother, stories of a glimpse of blond hair and green eyes that never lead to anything.

Dean is still in the wind. Still waiting, somewhere, for his brother.

She doesn't speak, doesn't move other than to hold out a pair of handcuffs that she apparently expects Sam to fasten around his own wrists.

If the caution and fear in her eyes don't tell the full story, the lack of a guard outside Sam's door does. He knows that he has no choice but to do what she says.

So he holds out his hands, allows her to lock the cold metal back around his wrists and allows her to take his arm, leading him out of the room, out of the hospital. Right into the backseat of an FBI-issued SUV. He sits down and she locks the door and climbs into the driver's seat. She starts the car, pulls away from the curb.

And he waits for her to tell him that his brother is gone, dead or captured by the team of agents she calls her friends. He waits for his life to end, waits for her to take him to another prison where the only thing that changes is the color of his clothes.

She never tells him that Dean is dead, never says that he's been captured.

Instead, she tosses a set of keys over her shoulder and informs Sam that the one labeled '14' will unlock his handcuffs.


	5. Chapter 5

"Honestly, the worst thing you can do is stare."

Sam only catches the woman's eye for a moment before she says those words, the first to leave her mouth since she broke him out of a mental hospital for a reason that is still unclear to Sam.

"Where are you taking me?" He tries, but to no avail—the woman simply glances in the rearview mirror once again before returning her eyes to the road. Sam shifts his gaze to the window to his right, his thoughts drifting as trees fly in and out of his view in milliseconds, gone before he can begin to guess at their species.

They left civilization over an hour ago, their only company each other, the endless trees, and occasionally a passing car. She's desperate to get somewhere, the speedometer needle never dipping below 80 as the SUV sails down the deserted highway.

Sam catches himself thinking that, if she wasn't a federal agent, he'd probably assume that she was taking him somewhere to kill him.

Remembering what he told her, what he revealed to her,he decides that that is still a definite possibility.


	6. Chapter 6

Sam had seen her only twice. Once when he passed her on the street, and the next that night on the news.

She was a federal agent, that pretty blonde with bright blue eyes and pursed lips he met outside a diner the day he and Dean arrived in Denver. He hadn't thought much of the encounter until she introduced herself as Agent Jennifer Jareau on the broadcast, explained to the press that the infamous Winchester brothers were alive and well and terrorizing the citizens of Denver, Colorado. And Sam had cursed when he saw the broadcast, cursed because he knew that she had recognized him when they passed on the sidewalk, because just by chance, the FBI had stumbled upon a natural explanation for the supernatural murders that had brought the Winchesters to Colorado in the first place—and because he was the one who gave it to them.

Sam saw her a third time two days later when the FBI broke down the door of the Winchesters' motel room—she was the one who shoved Dean against the wall and snapped handcuffs around his wrists. He saw her again when she walked into his interrogation room and said she just wanted to help and he, so desperate to find an ally in a world of people who thought he was a monster, decided to trust her—and for those first few hours, she looked like she believed him. Then he saw her in a warehouse when she pointed a gun at his chest and locked him away in a mental hospital because apparently, she was a very good actor.

She's thrown him for one loop after another, trusted him and betrayed him and freed him once again, and Sam doesn't know whether to follow her lead or disappear into the forest and never look back. And yet here he is, sitting in the backseat of her FBI SUV, doing absolutely nothing but watching and waiting as she turns off the highway, driving down a street whose sign is so dilapidated Sam can't even read the name on it.

"Where are you taking me, Agent Jareau?" Sam asks as she parks outside a cabin ten minutes off of the highway, ten minutes into the forest that Sam has been watching outside his window for hours. She just smiles, unlocking the car door and nodding to the cabin. Sam almost runs, almost knocks her to the ground and sprints into the forest. But then she opens her mouth and says something that freezes him in his tracks, forces him to reconsider. Proves that she trusts him, that he can trust her.

"Please, call me JJ."


	7. Chapter 7

"Quiet, evil one."

"Ooh, name-calling. So fearsome."

Sam stops in his tracks when he hears the familiar snark, unable to fully wrap his mind around the scene before him. Because despite everything that's happened in the past three days, despite everything that Sam has been lead to believe, Dean is right in front of him, lounging on a plush couch in a cabin in the woods, joking with an FBI agent and watching football on the TV.

And Sam is standing stock-still, really starting to wonder what the hell is going on.

Dean is the one who finally explains it, JJ's brilliant plan to get the brothers to safety that was briefly interrupted by their escape through the window. The improvised Plan B was the experience that Sam lived—the gun pointed at his chest, the mental hospital, the escape, his brother waiting in a cabin in the woods.

After he explains the past, Dean delves into the future, explains that JJ is going to help the Winchesters die again, disappear again—and maybe even convince her tech-savvy friend to knock some charges off of their records while she's at it. It's more than anyone has ever done for the brothers. It's a way for them to be free again, not just until next time but forever.

Throughout Dean's story, only one thought is clear in Sam's mind, and he finds himself staring at JJ with a new appreciation.

She trusted him. And even more than that, she believed him.

Three days of white rooms and white clothes don't just disappear, can't just be forgotten, but with a familiar green jacket draped over his shoulders—hiding away a little bit of the white shirt he still wears—Sam is pretty sure that he'll be okay.


	8. Chapter 8

"No, I said we were _safer_ , not _safe_."

Sam scowls at his brother's words as he crouches down out of view of the window, listening to the sirens that get closer and closer before suddenly disappearing again.

Dean's retelling of JJ's master plan didn't include the small detail that the forest amplifies the sounds coming from the highway, giving the brothers a clear account of every cop car and FBI vehicle that drives past with no way of knowing if any of them are heading for the cabin.

JJ left the brothers alone to return to her post, hoping that her absence was brief enough for no one to question her disappearance. Sam is usually an optimist but he remembers the agents who arrested him, remembers the way one young man looked at him with calculating eyes and a curious mind. Sam has no doubt that the young man won't notice his friend's departure.

Another siren flies past and Sam ducks his head again, cursing his brother and JJ and the nest of vampires killing people in Denver because between them they've managed to screw Sam over more times in two days than anyone else has in two years.

And as soon as the siren fades away into the distance, Sam starts looking for the nearest exits. It's only a matter of time before someone turns down the dirt road with the unreadable sign.


	9. Chapter 9

"So, what's your plan?"

"My plan was to follow your plan!"

Sam's answer falls on deaf ears as his brother sprints ahead, weaving through the trees. Sam should have known that Dean would depend on  _him_  to have a bright idea. He might have been able to come up with one if he'd had enough time. As is, Sam doesn't even know where the brothers are going.

It took twenty minutes for an SUV to barrel down the cabin road, sirens blaring. Sam and Dean abandoned their not-so-safe haven and took to the woods, running side-by-side and wordlessly agreeing to ignore the voices yelling at their backs.

JJ's plan has already been ruined, Sam is growing desperate, and his smartass big brother's inability to keep his mouth shut isn't exactly helping him think.

"Could you just shut up for a second?" Sam asks exasperatedly, cutting off Dean's running commentary of Die Hard quotes that apply to their current situation.

And he calls  _Sam_  the nerd.

An arm crashes into Sam's chest, cutting off his train of thought and stopping him in his tracks. Sam looks down to see that he's about a foot from the top of a rather steep incline covered in thorny foliage. Dean is breathing heavily, most of his body weight held up by his right hand, which is pressed against a tree. Sam takes a gulping breath, resting his hands on his knees and angling his head toward the sky.

And then he freezes, staring in disbelief at the wooden floor of a treehouse, barely visible through the interwoven branches.


	10. Chapter 10

"Are you even listening?"

"Yeah, it just takes me a while to process so much stupid all at once."

Sam groans, peering out of the window of the treehouse as the two men who cuffed him at the warehouse pass beneath the brothers' hiding place for the third time in as many minutes.

It took nearly fifteen minutes for Sam and Dean to figure out how to scale the trees and reach the small building—it's not so much a house as a single room. The treehouse itself turned out to be roughly fifty feet in the air, just high enough to be out of hearing range of the federal agents canvassing the forest floor. So of course, the brothers spent the next twenty minutes arguing about where to go next, each unhappy with the other's ideas.

Neither one of them are producing any plausible strategies, but Dean's last three plans managed to fail spectacularly and Sam really isn't in the mood to compromise.

The mysterious treehouse in the woods was a gift from above at first glance, but the novelty has long since worn off and Sam knows that it's far from functional as a permanent hideout. There's barely enough square-footage for both brothers to sit down and there's no food or water, much less indoor plumbing. Sam has once again found himself trapped—the brothers can't stay here forever, but the forest below is crawling with police officers and FBI agents who want nothing more than to lock Sam and Dean up and throw away the key.

With a sigh, Sam turns away from his window and makes his way across the room to Dean, who is trying to make a whip out of a pair of vines he pulled off of the roof of the treehouse. When Sam steps in the exact center of the treehouse, a sharp crack echoes through the small room.

Sam is able to catch only a glimpse of wide green eyes before the wood gives out beneath his feet and his brother disappears from view.


	11. Chapter 11

Sam is tumbling through the air, colors flashing before his eyes, wind howling around him. Reaching out, he hopes to seize something, anything, to slow down his fall.

It's just Sam's luck that he'd manage to step on the one waterlogged board in the treehouse. It just figures that one snapping board would start a contagion, taken over by gravity and pulling its neighbors down with it. It's not surprising that Sam would somehow find himself plummeting toward the forest floor, surrounded by a cloud of rotting wood and debris.

It's either fate or a stroke of luck that allows Sam to grab a branch and hang on without disconnecting his arm from the rest of his body. It also helps that his butt hits a different branch about half a second later, helping to break Sam's fall—and probably his tailbone.

He's somehow able to pull himself up onto the branch, somehow able to scale the tree, somehow able to reach a set of branches woven so tightly together that they form a sort of net. Sam is safe, he isn't dead, and he's still somewhat shielded from the agents standing directly beneath him. It's the same two from before, and they're both looking at the ground around them, trying to figure out the origin of the pieces of damp wood scattered around the forest. One of the agents is rubbing the top of his head, and Sam smirks—he was probably hit by some of the debris.

The agents start to look up and Sam's smirk vanishes as he remembers that the treehouse isn't nearly as invisible as he is.


	12. Chapter 12

If looks could kill, Sam would have been staked, buried, dug up, and then staked again for good measure.

Sam pulls himself the rest of the way into the treehouse, smiling weakly at his brother, who is staring at his brother with a venom in his expression that Sam sees right through. Dean's eyes betray his conflicting emotions—there's quite a bit of terror and relief, but Sam isn't surprised to see a lot of genuine anger.

After all, about five minutes ago Sam was plummeting to his death.

"So, stay out of the middle, yeah?" Sam suggests. Dean just scowls, returning to the whip he abandoned at the window. Dean pulls the green braid into the treehouse just as a silver streak flies past the window, barely missing the elder Winchester's nose before striking the roof of the treehouse.

Dean mutters a few choice words and sends his brother another glare as the forest comes alive. The shouts of the agents directly below draw the attention of the rest of the search party and soon Sam and Dean's treehouse is surrounded by armed cops who know their exact location and are probably aiming to kill.

"Well, I guess we can't stay here any longer," Sam says awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck as Dean offers him one last scowl. The elder Winchester loops his vine braid over his shoulder and turns his attention to the trees, trying to determine a safe path to the forest floor that's out of the view of the agents waiting below.


	13. Chapter 13

Running away isn't nearly as easy as they say.

Sam steps carefully, trying to avoid crushing leaves or snapping sticks as he follows his brother through the forest in near-silence.

It took fifteen minutes of running for the brothers to lose the agents and another five minutes of walking before they stopped hearing the voices shouting at their backs. Now, Sam is following Dean through the trees, heading for something he hopes his brother's acute sense of direction will actually be able to find.

Dean refused to tell Sam where they're headed—apparently, JJ's plan included a failsafe that no one bothered to fill Sam in on—and thanks to their current situation, Sam doesn't really have time to ask. After a minute, Dean crouches beside a tree and picks up a police-issue handgun that he offers to his brother.

Sam has just refused the weapon when a branch snaps behind him and both brothers spin around, Dean's finger already on the trigger.


	14. Chapter 14

"And it doesn't bother you at all that you nearly killed her?"

Sam glares daggers at Dean, who ignores him in favor of a staring match with JJ. The agent was barely able to duck in time to dodge the bullet Dean sent in her direction, and the expression of pure terror on her face tells Sam that she's probably reconsidering her decision to trust the Winchester brothers.

"I saw the vest and panicked." Dean defends himself, gesturing to the bulletproof vest JJ is now wearing—and more specifically to the three letters stamped across the blonde's chest in angry white letters. As irritated as he is with Dean for nearly killing their only ally, Sam is forced to forgive and forget. After all, if he had been the one holding the gun, Sam probably would have done the same thing.

"You have to get out of here," JJ says, casting a nervous look over her shoulder as the faint voices in the distance begin to grow more defined. Sam and Dean exchange a look, and the elder Winchester suddenly breaks into a grin.

Whatever Dean's plan is, Sam has a feeling he isn't going to like it.


	15. Chapter 15

They didn't want her to leave, so they duct-taped her to a tree.

Sam didn't end up liking Dean's plan at all, which isn't really surprising. Sam isn't the type to agree to any plan that involves tying an FBI agent to a tree and leaving her there. But with the sounds of the other agents—of JJ's friends—getting louder and closer, Sam knew that he didn't have much of a choice. After all, when the alternative is getting shot and/or going to prison for the rest of your life, taping an ally to a tree is an easy decision.

JJ told Dean exactly how to get to the highway, but neither of them bothered to share that information with Sam, so he's now trailing after his brother once again. The only difference is that now, they're both armed.

A loud shout at Sam's back is the only thing he needs to hear to know that JJ was just discovered—which means that it's time for him and Dean to pick up the pace.

The Winchester brothers are officially on the run.

From the FBI. 

Again.

The next time Dean wants to hunt vampires in a state capital, Sam is staying home.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, I've had a really busy week and legitimately didn't even realize a Tuesday had even passed. New update this Saturday, and we'll be back on schedule!

"I wish you'd stop and realize just how loud you're being."

The brothers are running softly now—or at least, they're supposed to be. Sam listens to Dean step on every branch with unerring accuracy for twenty minutes before he finally speaks up, and Dean makes it a couple more steps before he actually turns around, sending his brother a childish grin and stomping hard on a particularly large branch.

The sharp crack sounds so much like a gunshot that Sam cringes, listening as the sound echoes through the trees. He scowls at Dean, who just shrugs, his easy grin never faltering.

"I'm sure that our wonderful and trustworthy friend JJ has already told her team exactly where we are and where we're going, so why should we bother being quiet?" Dean asks.

"Because we don't want to get caught?" Sam points out, annoyed. "We have a ten-minute head start, Dean, if you keep quiet we might actually get out of this in one piece."

"Ten minutes is irrelevant when you're in the other guy's territory," Dean replies, turning around and continuing forward with a halfhearted shrug—although Sam notices that his movement has quieted significantly. Dean looks over his shoulder and carefully steps over a small twig, exaggerating the motion and smirking when Sam offers an unimpressed scowl in reply. Dean turns back around and continues forward and Sam shakes his head, readying to follow his brother.

He's barely made it three steps before he hears another loud crack echoing through the trees and fixes Dean with another glare. Dean stops in his tracks and turns around, face pale as he shakes his head and puts a finger to his lips.

It takes Sam a moment to wrap his head around what Dean is saying—or rather, what he isn't saying—but when he does, his face goes white.

That crack didn't come from a tree branch.


	17. Chapter 17

The sound instantly makes them both uncomfortable.

Not that that's really surprising. The sound of a gun going off would make pretty much anyone uncomfortable. But when you're running through the woods, desperately trying not to be caught by several armed FBI agents, the sound of a gun is something you want to avoid at all costs.

After that first gunshot, Sam and Dean took off through the forest, any thoughts of running softly gone as shot after shot peppered the air, the echo of the trees disguising the origins of the sounds and therefore the locations of the men holding the weapons. This most recent shot, however, was much louder, much closer, and when another one quickly follows, Sam and Dean both freeze, stiffening and glancing into the woods they just passed through as if a man in a navy blue vest will burst through the trees at any moment.

When the echo fades away into silence, Sam turns to see Dean wearing the same expression of fear he imagines is on his own face. The brothers exchange a look that conveys more than they could ever say aloud and continue forward, moving away from the discharging gun and the FBI agent who was holding it. Sam couldn't see the agent, couldn't see their face, but he knows that it wasn't JJ, and he knows that they must be angry.

Which means that Sam and Dean are in trouble, big time.

Sam follows Dean for another couple of minutes, walking slowly through the woods and ignoring the familiar running pains in his side as Dean takes several sharp turns, likely trying a new method of losing the FBI agents at their backs. They're back to running softly, trying to hide in plain sight from the weapons that could take them both down in an instant. After a minute, Dean suddenly disappears from Sam's view and the younger Winchester freezes, looking around in confusion.

At least until a hand grabs his leg and pulls him down into a well-hidden cave.

Finally able to catch his breath, Sam breaths deeply and quietly, smiling gratefully at his brother and waiting for the strain in his side to fade away.

The pain only grows stronger, and the smile abruptly drops from Sam's face when he looks down and realizes that what he believed to be sweat saturating his shirt is actually a deep red.


	18. Chapter 18

"So... I just realized... that I've been shot."

Sam puts it as delicately as he can, aware that if either brother so much as sneezes they're as good as dead. Luckily, Dean doesn't react verbally—instead, his expression tells Sam everything he would usually say, curse words and all. The elder Winchester brother acts quickly, helping Sam lift his bloody shirt and exposing the wound beneath. Fortunately for the brothers, the bullet just scraped past Sam's side, taking some skin with it but never actually entering his body. The wound is nowhere near lethal—at least, not anytime soon—just very bloody and very painful.

Despite the fact that Sam is the one who was shot, Dean is the one who appears to be in more pain, his face strained as he curses under his breath and searches for something to use as a temporary dressing. He eventually pulls off his own shirt, tearing one sleeve off and pressing it against Sam's side as he mutters something about bringing bandages, a thought that brings an unexpectedly genuine smile to Sam's face.

How dare they not pack bandages this morning, just in case one of them happened to get shot running from the FBI.

Dean doesn't seem to find the situation as entertaining and, with a glare at his brother, proceeds to climb out of the cave, kicking Sam lightly in the knee in the process.

Dean has just disappeared from Sam's view when another loud crack hits Sam's ears, followed by a too-familiar voice that says three words that make Sam's heart sink into his stomach.

"Dean Winchester, FBI."


	19. Chapter 19

"Please point your gun at me if it helps you relax."

Dean's tone just about hits that perfect blend of ease and sarcasm that the police has come to expect from him, but to Sam's trained ear, his brother's fear is obvious. From his position in the cave, Sam can't see his brother, but he can picture him in his mind—his playful smirk and his relaxed hands raised up in the air, but also the slight strain in the wrinkles by his eyes and the almost invisible tremor in the tips of his fingers.

Sam chooses not to include the gun pointed at Dean's chest in his mental image.

"Where's your brother?" A second voice asks, and Sam amends his picture to include the extra agent, grimacing. The more people up there that Sam doesn't know about, the less likely the Winchesters will be able to get out of here alive.

"He's long gone." Dean lies effortlessly, not a hint of hesitation in his voice. Sam can't help but smile as he pictures the annoyance on the agents' faces. "He ran for the highway. He's probably halfway to Seattle by now."

"Impossible." The first agent replies, just as confident as Dean sounds. "Agent Morgan here definitely hit one of you, and seeing as you aren't bleeding, I'm going to assume that it was your brother."

"Give up his location and we can help him." The other agent adds, and Sam shakes his head. They're playing to Dean's protectiveness to get him to reveal Sam's location. Dean isn't that stupid.

"Well, Agent Morgan, you must not be the sharpshooter you thought you were because my brother isn't even in Colorado anymore," Dean says. Sam shifts, trying to find a way to see his brother or at least the agents, and a sharp pain in his side nearly gives him away as he bites his lip harshly, swallowing a yelp.

Worried by the strength of the pain, Sam looks down at his side and discovers in horror that the graze on his side is bleeding straight through Dean's makeshift bandage. Sam peels the ruined shred of t-shirt away from his side and scrutinizes his injury more closely, his fear increasing by the second. What Sam thought was just a minor graze is actually wider and deeper than it appeared at first glance, and Sam can tell that he'll need at least a couple of stitches.

And immediate medical attention.

With a sigh, Sam pushes himself out of the cave, lifting one hand in surrender as he holds Dean's bloody shirt sleeve to his side with the other. The agents, although obviously surprised, are quick to take action.

"Sam and Dean Winchester, you're under arrest for the murders of..."

The words fade from Sam's ears as the world spins, and as one of the agents approaches Sam, the other spins his brother around and pulls his hands behind his back.

It's not the pain in Sam's side or the harsh words of the agents or even the bite of the handcuffs that causes Sam to lose hope. It's the expression of utter fear on Dean's face.


	20. Chapter 20

He waited for her.

Waited for her to appear outside his hospital room, his cell, his interrogation room, anywhere in his sight, but she never came.

Sam shifts in the hard metal chair, waiting for his second round of interrogations to begin.

He's been in the local police precinct for three hours—two and a half of which have been spent in this interrogation room—and he spent another two hours before his arrival at a nearby hospital getting his side cleaned, stitched, and bandaged while a trio of FBI agents glared menacingly at him. Sam hasn't seen Dean since his brother was loaded into the back of a different black SUV, and Sam can't help but worry. What if they sent Dean straight to prison, or to DC with some of the other agents? Sam is uncomfortably aware of the fact that if he and his brother have already been separated, it's doubtful that they'll see each other again anytime in the near future—if at all.

And in his current situation—with approximately fifteen stitches in his side and handcuffs on his wrists—all Sam can do is wait and worry. The rational part of his brain knows—and is valiantly trying to convince the rest of Sam's psyche—that the agents are letting him stew in an attempt to force him to open up, but that knowledge isn't doing much to stop the flashbacks to various other times Sam found himself alone in a room in handcuffs from appearing with increasing and alarming frequency.

None of those situations ended well, so statistically speaking, what are the chances that this one does?

Sam has just given up on stoicism and started to pull at the handcuffs—it's not a test of their strength so much as something to do—when the door opens and one of his arresting agents, an African American man whose glare could melt steel, enters the room.

And then the door opens a little bit wider and JJ follows the other agent in, a nervous expression on her face.


	21. Chapter 21

"Destroying lives, one person at a time."

As soon as the male agent—he introduced himself as Morgan—finishes his statement, his mouth returns to the hard line it's held since he walked into the interrogation room. His eyes have yet to move from Sam's and the intense anger in them has yet to falter. This is the agent who shot Sam in the forest, he's sure of it. The man doesn't appear to care at all about the fifteen stitches in Sam's side that his bullet caused. If the twitch of his lips when Sam pulls his stitching slightly and winces says anything, he's actually happy about it.

"We didn't kill these people." Sam defends, his tone strong but his resolve weak. Sam knows that nothing he says will convince the FBI of his innocence, but he can't just give up.

Agent Morgan responds to Sam's protests by placing a series of photographs on the table in front of Sam—photos of the three Denver victims and their families.

Sam can barely scan the pictures for fifteen seconds before he's forced to turn away, swallowing hard around the lump that forms in his throat. He doesn't avert his eyes because he's guilty—which is probably how Agent Morgan interprets his reaction—but because it hurts, knowing that these people are dead because Sam couldn't get here in time, couldn't save them in time.

"It sucks, doesn't it?" Agent Morgan asks, not a hint of sympathy in his tone. "Having to see the lives that you've ruined? Having to be reminded that the people you killed were actual human beings with lives and families?" Sam looks down at his hands, his face burning as Morgan's words hit home and dig deep.

"Morgan, go talk to the brother. Send Reid in here." JJ says sternly, and Sam looks up to see her sending Agent Morgan a glare that dares him to challenge her. He scowls but complies, disappearing from the room and dragging his feet as he goes. A moment later, the man with the all-knowing eyes—the one that Sam figured would know that JJ had betrayed her team—enters the room, giving JJ a funny look.

"What's going on?" He asks, looking JJ and Sam over before focusing his attention on the door. "Morgan looks pissed."

"He got too emotional, so I told him to talk a walk," JJ says, closing the door and smiling at Sam before turning to the newcomer and crossing her arms. "Spence, Sam and his brother are innocent." JJ continues to Sam's utter disbelief.

"What?" The man—Reid, Sam assumes—says, just as surprised as Sam.

"Sam, you can trust Spence." JJ continues, turning her attention to Sam and ignoring her fellow agent's confusion entirely. "I promise. Just tell him what you told me."


	22. Chapter 22

"Just keep moving, that's all you can do."

Sam looks down at his hands, biting his lip. Reid has gone totally—and uncharacteristically, if JJ's stunned expression says anything—silent as he processes the massive, world-shattering revelation he was just hit with.  Sam doubts that Reid was expecting any of the information that he was just given, but the answer to his last question was probably the most unnerving of all. Sam was almost as surprised by his own answer as he was by Reid's question.

How do you cope with the loss?

"Spence, we have to get Sam and Dean out of here," JJ says urgently, glancing at the one-way mirror set into the wall behind her. "They already took care of the vampire here in Denver, but there are so many other threats out there that they can stop, that they need to stop. There are people that need saving, people that only they can save. People that we can't."

"I get that," Reid says, nodding. Sam smiles weakly, sagging into his seat. He was terrified that Reid would storm from the room and tell his boss what Sam said, would lock Sam back in that white room and fire JJ. But it looks like Reid is on his side. "But how?" Reid continues. "They're criminals, JJ, and murder is only one of the charges on their rap sheets. Hotch isn't going to just let them vanish." It looks like he wants to say more but before he can the door opens once again and another agent enters the room.

"JJ. Reid." The third agent—this one is Sam's original arresting officer and also the one who spoke to Dean when the brothers gave themselves up in the forest—crosses the room and comes to a stop behind Sam. JJ and Reid exchange a loaded look but remain silent, turning their attention to the newcomer.

"What is it, Hotch?" Reid asks after a second, and Sam suddenly understands the sudden discomfort that fell over the two agents. This is Hotchner, the head of JJ and Reid's unit—in other words, their boss. He's the one who would be doling out the punishment should JJ and Reid be caught helping Sam and Dean.

"I'm taking him back to his cell," Hotch explains, producing a key and freeing Sam from the table only to immediately secure the cuff around his hand again. "Morgan informed me that JJ sent him out for getting too invested and I decided that we all needed to take a break from this." Hotch grabs Sam's arm and pulls him to his feet, leading him out of the interrogation room. JJ and Reid trail behind their boss and Sam, conversing in hushed tones, but Sam ignores them in favor of mapping out the precinct in his mind as they cross it—an automatic and likely futile search for possible escape routes.

Sam's search, however instinctive it may be, is instantly abandoned and his feet frozen in their tracks when his brother's voice reaches his ears.


	23. Chapter 23

"I don't need your judgment."

Dean's anger carries loud and clear from across the precinct and Sam halts suddenly, pulling Hotch to an unexpected stop beside him and nearly wrenching his arm from the agent's grasp in the process. Hotch pulls on Sam's elbow but Sam doesn't move, digging his heels into the carpet and searching frantically for his brother.

"I'm not here because I'm guilty, I'm here because you decided to shoot my brother." Dean continues, his voice only growing louder as his rage intensifies.

"You're a serial killer." Agent Morgan replies, and Sam's scanning grows more frantic. It's obvious that Morgan is far from a fan of the brothers, and if he's Dean's only company things are sure to only get worse from here. "You're a psychopath." Morgan continues. "What makes Sam so special, huh? Why do you care so much about him?"

"He's my brother!" Dean exclaims exasperatedly. Hotch yanks even harder on Sam's arm but Sam ignores him entirely, planting his feet and focusing his attention on the bright green eyes he's finally located in an office across the room. "Unlike you sons of bitches, Sam actually cares about what happens to me, and I care about what happens to him." Dean's voice gets higher and higher with every word and Sam winces. He's getting pretty pissed. "And unlike you, Agent Asswipe, Sam is capable of seeing the good in people. Sam could find the good side of a serial arsonist, and yet you couldn't find the good in him if came up and socked you in the face." Dean scoffs loudly, shaking his head and fixing Agent Morgan with a withering glare. "And somehow he's the villain in this narrative and you're the hero."

"Let's go," Hotch says sternly, pulling Sam's arm as hard as he can. Sam stumbles but rights himself, taking a few steps forward but stopping again as soon as the office door opens and Dean is led out.

"Dean!" Sam yells and his brother's head shoots up as he too stops in his tracks, pulling Agent Morgan to an abrupt halt—the agent, Sam notes with no small degree of satisfaction, stumbles and almost pitches into a wall before righting himself.

"Sammy!" Dean replies, sending Sam a wide grin as Morgan yanks him down a hallway and out of view. As soon as his brother is gone, Sam starts walking again, allowing Hotch to lead him down a couple of hallways and into a holding cell. Hotch is obviously expecting some resistance so he takes Sam's cuffs off and immediately slams the door in Sam's face, staring him down menacingly. Sam just smiles somewhat awkwardly, walking over to the bench on one side of the room and sitting down.

"Dean will be transferred tomorrow," Hotch informs JJ and Reid when they come to a stop outside of Sam's cell. "Sam will be staying here until his trial." Hotch leaves first but JJ and Reid just share another look before they follow, leaving Sam alone in his cell. He spends a few seconds familiarizing himself with his surroundings—the room is small and pretty bland, but still infinitely preferable to the white room of a few days ago—before lying down on the bench and closing his eyes.

Something tells Sam that tomorrow is going to be a busy day.

He's going to need the rest.


	24. Chapter 24

"The sun hasn't even come up and you want me to do what now?"

Groggy as he is—it's four in the morning and while Sam is a morning person, even he thinks that this is a bit extreme—it takes Sam two more explanations to fully process what JJ is telling him in hushed tones and rushed words. It's another crazy, half-baked plan that involves Sam punching JJ several times, taking her gun and keys, breaking Dean out of his cell, and leaving the precinct in a 'stolen' FBI vehicle. It's ridiculous, risky, and if one thing goes wrong Sam will never see the light of day again.

And yet somehow, Sam has heard a lot worse.

The next fifteen minutes pass in a blur, and the next thing Sam is fully aware of is sitting in the passenger seat of a black SUV with the sirens blaring. Dean is behind the wheel grinning like a madman and swerving through traffic to put the precinct as far behind them as possible as fast as possible. Somewhere in the city that they're trying to leave behind, JJ is probably being discovered where she's locked in Sam's holding cell, her keys and gun missing and a sizable bruise forming on her forehead. From what Sam can tell—JJ apparently didn't tell him the whole plan, only the part that directly involved him, and when he got to the opposite side of the precinct Dean was already waiting for him—Reid is in the same situation in Dean's cell, and Hotch, Morgan, and the rest of the FBI's top unit are in a state of panic as the Winchester brothers slip through their fingers once again.

Thanks to JJ—and a tech-savvy agent named Garcia that she swore could be trusted with this small piece of the plan—the records for the SUV the brothers stole have been conveniently lost.

Sam smiles, settling into his seat and picturing the fierce anger on Agent Morgan's face when he finds his incapacitated coworkers. Dean fiddles with the radio for a minute before he finds a station that plays classic rock and only then does he switch off the siren, quickly blending into the early morning traffic.

Sam turns, watching as the forest he spent so much of the previous day in disappear in his rearview mirror.


	25. Chapter 25

"Well, that didn't end the way I expected, but at least nobody important died."

Sam tears his eyes away from the scenery—they've been driving through a thick forest for a while now, but every minute or so Sam catches a glimpse of a glittering lake—and frowns at his brother.

"Nobody _important_? You didn't kill anyone, did you?" Sam asks worriedly—the last thing they need right now is another body on their hands. Dean just smirks, cranking the radio up. "Not funny, man." Sam's words are drowned out by the music and he scowls, turning back to the window.

Outside, a forest flies past, green leaves soaking up the early rays of sunrise. Inside, Dean sings at the top of his lungs, a huge smile on his face as he studies the map he found in the glove compartment—either they got really lucky or JJ put even more detail into her plan than Sam thought.

The brothers left Denver in the dust about an hour ago, but Sam knows that their journey is far from over. They may have gotten away this time, but JJ and Reid's team isn't going to leave them be. They'll be hunted mercilessly for the next few months or even years—or at least until they can successfully fake their deaths convincingly again.

The Winchesters are on the run once again. But this time, Sam doesn't think it will end too badly. This time, they might actually have a pretty good chance of getting away.

This time, they have allies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you have it! Thanks to everyone who read this story, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> P.S.: For those of you who read my Supernatural/Marvel crossover Escaping the Dark Side, the first chapter of the sequel, Judgement Day, will come out one week from today so keep an eye out for it!


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